


The Girl From Tomorrow

by zauberer_sirin



Category: Doctor Who (2005), Life on Mars (UK)
Genre: Crossover, Developing Relationship, F/M, Friends to Lovers, Sad Ending, Time Travel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-04-13
Updated: 2008-04-13
Packaged: 2018-05-13 19:04:35
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,970
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5713618
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zauberer_sirin/pseuds/zauberer_sirin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Martha Jones gets stranded in 1972. So she starts a new life. After a year of residence in various small towns, she lands a job in Manchester. You can imagine the rest.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Girl From Tomorrow

**it all starts when you bump your head**

The little voice in the back of her head, the one saying, sometimes sweetly, sometimes desperate, _the Doctor will come and get me_ , gets fainter and fainter each day, until-

Well, Martha Jones is not one to stay put, play the damsel in distress and wait for a rescue.

“The Doctor will come and get me,” she tells herself, but in the meantime…

 

**this is a box, a magical box**

She can’t build a time machine, but she can talk to someone who knows they exist.

It’s decades until she works for UNIT –hell, it’s years before she is even born- but they know enough about the Doctor already.

“I think it’s better if we don’t tell the Doctor, the current one, _your_ Doctor,” she tells the Brigadier. “It might complicate… things.”

“Yes, yes, I’ve been given that kind of talk already,” the Brigadier replies, then looks at her curiously. “And we, Miss Jones? Haven’t we met, in the future? Please, don’t tell me I’m dead.”

“Retired.”

“That’s worse.”

Martha smiles.

 

**night ward for the junior doctor, oh the joy**

There’s something indubitably empowering about being a woman doctor in 1972.

In 2007 no one cares about that – but here and now everybody looks at her as if she was some sort of rare laboratory specimen (as if she was an _alien_ ); _Doctor Jones_ and everybody looks at her half-stunned, half-offended. Martha likes the _offended_ part of that look.

She takes a page off the Doctor’s book: don’t mess with historical events, keep a low profile, be ordinary.

She doesn’t try to find her family – it would be nice, to see her parents when they were young, even from a distance. But she has seen far too many movies like this, and she can just about picture the Doctor’s face if he finds out.

So Martha keeps away from everything and everybody she knows, no matter how lonely it gets.

Three things that are not as great at the indubitably powerful feeling of being a woman doctor in 1972:

1- Everybody mistakes her for a nurse.  
2- She hasn’t slept more than three straight hours a night for months. UNIT got her papers sorted out but she is still a junior doctor and night wards on call are night wards on call.  
3- She has to spend one year of doing small town residences in the country. She spends two months sewing cuts from drunken punch-ups in some godforsaken village in the Lake District where she thinks she wants to quit medicine altogether. But then she spends one very nice summer somewhere called Wells, where the only illness known is the cattle husk and the local vet asked her in marriage five minutes after he met her.

 

One thing that makes being a doctor in 1972 FUCKING GREAT:

\- Beepers hadn’t been invented yet.

 

**never quit your day job**

She is practically dozing off through her surgery residence somewhere in Lancashire when she notices three orange lights crossing the sky one night.

She calls UNIT.

The Brigadier jokes that they should put her in the payroll yet.

She is careful to avoid meeting the Doctor when he comes to sort out the three alien escape pods crashed in the skirts of town. 

She avoids meeting him but she can’t help but sneak a glance at him: older, grey-haired and his clothes look uncomfortably velvet-like but yes, _that’s the Doctor_ and Martha can’t wipe the smile off her face for days.

 

**careful what you wish for**

It takes her a year of crappy residences in less-than-one-thousand-population villages before she gets offered a decent job in a big city.

It’s still winter and the North is cold; Martha buys three new sweaters, the complete works of Elizabeth Gaskell for the long night wards and three bars of chocolate for the train journey.

 

**whatever happened to all the classy lads?**

Barely one month into the job and Martha is starting to miss her days in the county practice.

In villages the idea of a woman doctor, and even more so, a _black_ woman doctor, is literally incomprehensible, but small town people were always too polite –or _chivalrous_ , she prefers that word- to remark about the anomaly that Martha was.

Town centre Manchester is many things, none of them _polite_.

Many patients refuse to be treated by her, some because she is _a bird_ , some because she is _one of them coloured_. Pick your excuse.

Other complain that she is plain weird. 

“You speak like a nutty,” her floor manager tells her one day. He is not too sleazy around her –not too sleazy for 1973, anyway- and Martha guesses she could have worse bosses. “Which part of the Caribbean did you say you was?”

“London,” Martha replies.

Her boss looks at her and nods and then everybody understands because they all think that yes, London is like _another planet_.

 

**it starts when you bump your head II**

It takes her a second to realize that he is not, actually, _him_.

She has a moment of panic, a moment of _something must have gone wrong_ , a moment of _when am I?_ , a horrible moment of _he survived_.

But no. On a closer look it’s not him, it’s obviously not him. It looks like him, and, at the same time, nothing like him. 

The eyes, and the smile.

They are nothing like the Master’s.

 

**did not I dance with you in Brabant once?**

“Are you okay?”

Martha blinks.

“I said, Are you okay?”

The man is kneeling over her, a concerned look in his face. It’s odd, his face is exactly like _his_. She can hear shouting and siren alarms. She vaguely wonders if Pete, the drunk ambulance driver is on call today. She hopes not.

“Yes, yes,” she says, not quite knowing what she’s saying. “Of course I’m okay. It’s just that you remind me of a dead man.”

“Blimey, Tyler,” says another, taller man by her side, “that one is original. Don’t you have _normal_ girlfriends?”

“You are bleeding,” the guy who looks exactly like the Master tells her.

“I’m pretty sure I have a concussion, but it’s not too severe.”

“What are you, a doctor?” the tall man says.

“Actually, I am.”

“Yeah, right, and my granny is a brain surgeon.”

Martha thinks, oh, yes, I know that reaction; it takes some people a lot of convincing until they believe she is a doctor. She has long stopped taking it personally.

The guy-who-is-not-the-Master rolls his eyes.

“Guv, why don’t you go escort the culprits to the police car?”

“Sorry, it sounded awfully like an order, DI Tyler. I must have misheard.”

“Of course, I would never presume to issue my superior an order.”

“Don’t test my patience,” says the tall guy, but he leaves anyway.

Martha’s head feels like a truck just run her over.

“What happened?” she asks.

“I’m a police officer. You were caught up in a hostage situation in the bank. The robbers knocked you down. Gave you a good one.”

“Very concise, thank you,” Martha teases, touching the back of her head. The blood is beginning to dry, which means she has stopped bleeding, which is good.

“I’ll tell the ambulance guys to bring a stretcher,” he is about to stand up but Martha stops him, grabbing the lapel of his leather jacket.

“No, please,” she says. “I really am a doctor. And I know how those guys work. I have a better chance of surviving if I walk to the ambulance.”

That makes him smile.

Martha thinks he has a nice smile; nothing like the Master’s.

“Let me help you up, then,” he says, putting one arm around her waist and sitting her up.

“Thank you, officer…”

“Tyler. Call me Sam.”

She was about to cash her pay check when the hold-up started. Mondays are bad enough without blows to her head. She takes two days off work and two bottles of Paracetamol.

She sleeps until Wednesday and tries not to think too much about why the Master was wearing the face of a police officer from 1973.

She wishes the Doctor were here.

 

**I look at you and smile because I’m fine**

So the second time his face still makes her stomach turn in the ugliest way. 

But then he smiles, and it’s polite, yes, but quite honest, and Martha suddenly remembers _this is not the Master_ , can’t be, no matter how good at surviving the guy was, you can’t fake a smile like this.

He hands her the witness statement from the robbery. She signs it and he stares at the still-swelling wound in her head.

“Alright?”

“I’ll survive,” Martha says, knowing it’s clichéd and lame but unable to stop herself.

But Sam seems to take it and leave with it, muttering a sunny _see you_ as he walks out.

 

**for those of you just tuning in, there will be no reprise of last week’s episode**

The next time his clothes are covered in blood and her lab coat is covered in blood and it’s the same blood. 

Martha is yelling “STAB WOUND!” throughout the whole A&E and Sam is surprised a voice so tiny could sound so commanding. Sam is busy, of course, trying to stop the bleeding from the poor man’s side while the boys with the stretcher do their best to kill him.

“This is a very important witness,” Sam tells her. “You need to save his life.”

Martha gives him a cold look.

“You don’t need to tell me he is a witness of anything, inspector,” she growls. “I was going to save his bloody life anyway.”

The confidence in that voice, and the indignation. Right now Sam has nothing but admiration for this girl.

 

**I don’t have any skin but that’s just the way it goes**

A young black female doctor walks into the CID, and no, it’s not the start of a joke.

Phyllis announces “someone to see you, boss” in a strange, quite-impressed voice.

Everybody turns to Martha and looks at her like she had two heads.

But Sam says “hello, doctor” as if she walked here every day.

“It’s about the stab victim.”

“Has he woken up?” Sam asks, hopeful.

“No, sorry.”

Gene shoots Sam an exasperated glance.

“Oh, yes, sorry. This is Martha Jones. She is the doctor in charge of the witness from the Farragon murders.”

Martha clears her throat.

“I thought you might want to know, inspectors.” She feels a bit intimidated, standing in the middle of CID, like somebody put a spotlight on her. “The man you are looking for, the attacker, is left-handed.”

Gene and Sam exchange a look.

“A gypsy is she?” Gene comments. “More into voodoo I’d have sworn, by the look of her.”

Sam rolls his eyes: “Why do you say that, Martha?”

She takes a step towards him.

“I was disinfecting the stab wound and I notice these marks, like the indentures in a knife. They were in the downside of the wound. And the victim has bruises around his wrists, like somebody had grabbed him down. So it must have gone like this… May I?” She asks Sam for permission and Sam nods, although he is not quite sure what he is saying yes to.

Martha takes a pen from the pocket of her lab coat. She walks up to Sam and puts one hand on his shoulder, pushing so that he turns his back to her.

Ray whistles and Gene gives Sam a questioning look.

“The attacker grabbed him like this,” Martha says, twisting Sam’s arms behind his back, grabbing both his wrists with one hand. Sam looks at her over his shoulder and gives out a small, amused sigh. “And he stabbed him like this.”

Martha mimics the stabbing, touching the end of the pen to Sam’s ribcage. Sam shrinks away a bit, not from that touch but rather from the feeling of her fingers around his wrists and her breath right behind the back of his neck.

“That’s why I think the attacker is left-handed,” she concludes, looking at Sam over his shoulder, giving him a sly smile. She lets him go – her fingertips brush the palm of his hand as she lets it free; Sam notes the gesture and wonders what it means.

“Well, that’s-“ Sam starts, suddenly and strangely tongue-tied. “Yes, that’s useful. Thanks, Martha.”

Gene’s gaze shifts from Sam to Martha.

“Blimey,” he says to her, or more in her general direction. “Are you working for the Caribbean CID as well as a nurse?”

Martha chuckles.

“I’m a doctor, not a nurse. And I’m from African descent, not West Indian, mister Hunt.”

“It’s _DCI Hunt_ not _mister_ , love.”

Martha crosses her arms: “It’s _Doctor Jones_ , not _love_ , Chief Inspector.”

Gene raises an eyebrow – at Sam.

“She is a right smarty-pants, too. If it weren’t for her skin I’d say you were twins, Tyler.”

Sam decides to get Martha out of the building before anyone gets hurts. Apart from his already debauched faith in humanity, that is.

 

**love in the times of political correctness**

“I doubt he’s even drunk one cappuccino in his entire life. But trust Gene Hunt to use the word as a racist insult. I’m really, really sorry, Martha.”

“I don’t mind it. I’ve have worse.”

“Really?”

“Shakespeare,” Martha drops conversationally.

“You are weird. I like that.”

“There was this kid once say to me, I was scrubbing the floor. Don’t ask. He said, he asked how I was able to tell when the floor was dirty, with hands like mine.”

Sam chuckles, and then makes this gasping sound that of whenever you don’t want to laugh but it comes out anyway.

“Okay that’s funny. Sorry, I should be appalled.”

“No, go on. It’s funny.”

“I am mortified. Gene is… unpardonable.”

 

**a very private conspiracy**

So he’s their only witness and his statement could bring down Manchester’s worst branch of organized crime since… (well, since his father, Sam thinks, but it’s a fucking depressing thought).

“Trouble is,” he tells her, tapping his fingertips on a forgotten chart over the desk. “My boss doesn’t believe in witness protection. Especially for as-of-yet-unconscious witness. So it’s up to me to keep an eye on him.”

He speaks like a knight in shining armor, which is _too_ weird, Martha thinks, considering… _his face_. She shakes that thought away.

“So I guess it’s up to me tonight,” he says, shrugging.

“I’ll find you a comfortable chair,” she grins at him.

 

**you are brave enough to scare away my nightmares**

She brings him coffee every hour and watches as he pulls his leather jacket over himself like a blanket, when at three in the morning the heating dies down a bit; the chair is too small and not that comfortable but she comes to chat with him in her breaks, about the torture of night wards on call, about the wino downstairs in the A&E who mistakes Martha for his “Auntie Amelia” week in and week out. Mainly she talks about small, silly things to keep him company.

“You don’t have to help me keep awake,” he says, brushing his fingers against her hip for no apparent reason other than he seems a bit sleepy and hazy. “I’m a professional.”

Martha looks down at her watch and then at her patients’ charts.

“Yeah, but _you_ have to help _me_ stay awake.”

 

**the value of a pop culture mention at the right time**

And because Sam is right, Sam is always bloody right, they end up behind the admissions desk, he and Martha, fending off a death squad sent to get rid of Martha’s patient.

Oh, and Sam is running out of bullets.

“I told you. Didn’t I told you?” Martha nods, the hissing of a shot passing above their heads. “I told Guv, I told him we needed protection for this guy. But did he listen? Does he ever listen? No. N-bloody-O.”

Another shot and a nurse hiding under her patient’s bed lets out a horrible, almost ridiculous scream.

“I should have insisted,” Sam goes on, berating himself, gun in hand. “I knew they’d come back to take care of the witness. I just- I had no idea they were going to get all Tarantino on us.”

Martha’s stomach jumps.

She grabs Sam’s forearm.

“Wait. How do you know about Tarantino? That’s like twenty years in the future.”

Sam looks at her, eyes very wide, kind of _horrified_.

“Wait. How do _you_ know about that?”

“What?”

Then they hear a police siren and more bullets fly and someone kicks down a door –Sam has a pretty good idea who- and in a moment there are _armed bastards_ everywhere and that’s good, that’s very good, but it puts their conversation about Tarantino on hold.

 

**work yourself back to sanity**

“Armed response,” Gene chants happily when the two gunners are cuffed.

“I would have preferred not to be left alone to fend the poor witness by myself all night, but cheers, Guv,” Sam complains, patting Gene on the back mockingly.

He catches Martha with the corner of his eye, grabbing her stuff and signing off. 

Sam mumbles something to Gene about _not being up for paperwork_ or _even you lot can handle this now_ and brushes past him before Gene can protests.

It’s by the hospital entrance that he catches up; he grabs Martha’s elbow softly.

“Don’t you think we have to talk?” he says with a quizzical look, half grin and half _come on_.

 

**I know all of your secrets and you, all of mine**

“I was travelling with a friend in a time machine and got stranded on 1972,” Martha blurts out.

“I had an accident and woke up in 1973. I don’t know if I’m mad, in a coma, or back in time,” he says without stopping for air.

Martha laughs: “Okay, I admit it, yours is cooler.”

They walk down the street from the hospital; the sound of police and ambulance sirens still ringing in their ears.

It’s not quite dawn yet.

“Listen, are you hungry?” Sam asks.

Martha buries her hands in her pockets.

“Well, I haven’t slept all night, I’ve been shot at, and I’ve discovered that I’m not the only time traveler in the city. Of course I’m starving.”

 

**you take yours with sugar and milk?**

It’s a two-and-a-half hours breakfast.

Martha doesn’t stomach beans well this early so Sam watches as she meticulously puts pushes them apart in the plate with her fork – he thinks it’s cute. He lets his tea get cold watching.

“I knew there was something weird about you,” he tells her, triumphant. “I _knew_ it.”

They reminiscence about the future.

“Twenty-four hours news channels,” he says. “I miss that. They make my mornings so much better.”

“IPods.”

“Oh, definitely IPods, I miss mine.”

“Sensible clothes.”

“Sensible food. I miss the _organic_ label on everything,” he says. “I miss Jamie Oliver and Gordon Ramsay and Masterchef. It’s all grub and gravy here.”

“It’s silly but I miss my Oyster card.”

“Oh, London girl.” He hides his grin behind the tea cup. “You know what I miss? A bit of equality. If I have to sit through another day of blatant misogyny at work my head will explode.”

Martha gives him a hard, amused look. 

“ _You_ are complaining about women’s rights? To _me_?”

He smiles shyly and she orders another cup of tea and they spend various minutes _not looking_ at each other, just basking in this strange, sudden familiarity: they feel like soldiers, brought together by a common enemy; no, more like veterans of a common war where they never met but now they are brought together by the memory of the battle.

Now they are comparing scars.

There are a couple of constructions workers laughing loudly from the other side of the café.

 

**ulterior motives aside**

They become some kind of friends after that.

Sam thinks maybe it’s because they have _no one else_.

They have very little in common and although Sam is very careful not to sound patronizing, he is aware he is almost fifteen years older than her and they shouldn’t be friends. 

But they are.

 

**you’ve waited so long and I’ve waited long enough for you**

It’s only after meeting Sam, after listening to his story that Martha starts really, really, **really** wishing the Doctor would find her.

She even starts thinking out plans to speed up the process; she is thinking about going out there and finding the Doctor herself.

Because she thinks about the TARDIS and she thinks about Sam and Martha would love to offer him a lift, actually, because, little as she knows him yet, she can see Sam is all tiny broken pieces and _he doesn’t have to be_ , it would be so easy to put him back together.

And the Doctor could, he could.

 

**how to disappear completely (it’s an omen, really)**

The white coats –Martha is learning the slang, she is proud to say- drag in a poor man who keeps babbling about aliens and spaceships and everybody in the hospital laughs at him as they escort him forcefully to the psychiatric wing.

But Martha doesn’t laugh.

She knows there are aliens and spaceships.

She calls UNIT to see if they have any information, if there has been any weird stuff going on around Manchester these days.

The Brigadier kind of snaps and shouts at her (gentlemanly, of course, even his anger is polite) because “we have a proper mess down here” and “no time for your kiddie games” but also “do you want to come and give us a hand?” and Martha smiles at the way he says _Miss Jones_ like a request and a warning at the same time.

Of course she wants to come down and give them a hand.

In the end it turns out that UNIT was wrestling with a particularly carnivore race of plants; Martha cheers “triffids!”, hoping it’s an old enough reference for the team to get. And well, a couple of people get bitten but nobody dies – Martha thinks this is a better day than she usually has in accident & emergency.

In the aftermath she kind of catches Mike Yates flirting with her and then she kind of flirts with Benton herself and that’s when the Brigadier drags her to his office, _this is 1972, what the hell are you doing, young lady_ , saying something about being disruptive as well; she decides that maybe Sam Tyler has spoiled her a bit, making her forget the social conventions of this time.

The Brigadier begrudgingly invites her to his secret stash of scotch and seems relieved when she refuses.

“We are really going to have you on the payroll.”

“I just bandaged a couple of wounds,” she dismisses him. “And I don’t want to leave any paper trail in connection with UNIT, really.”

“Yes, it would be quite complex to explain, in the future.”

She comes back from London and tells Sam about the guy in the hospital, the one talking about aliens; Sam seems upset about that, but says nothing. He seems tired and hard around the edges and she asks if he is okay with one hand on his shoulder and Sam thinks _we are proper friends now_ , not just the Time Travel Lonely Hearts Club Band anymore.

“Had a rough week,” he tells her.

That’s not the whole story, of course, Martha knows. But she lets him keep the rest to himself if he lets her buy him dinner.

 

**you are living in a doll house, and I don’t mean Ibsen-like**

“I’ve been thinking,” he says one morning when he picks her up from a long night on call, with supply of coffee and sympathy. They have eased up into this _friendship_ routine so effortlessly that Sam sometimes forgets she is _from the future, too_ , and sometimes he forgets she is merely a girl and they don’t have that much in common.

(in exchange sometimes Martha almost forgets where she’d seen his face before)

So, Martha has started taking his coffee black, so Sam’s pockets fill with little sugar packets she never uses and one day he says _I’ve been thinking_.

“I don’t know you that well, Sam, but you do that a lot.”

“I’ve been thinking that you, you are most likely to be a construct. Just another figment of my imagination. I just made you up so I could have someone to talk about you know, _the future_.”

“Like an imaginary friend?” He nods. “Cool. That’s very clever.”

“It makes sense. Doesn’t it? Lately I’ve been… lonely.” But he regrets telling her that, surrendering her that bit of information. “Well, forget it. It’s silly.”

“This is not a fantasy, Sam. You’ve gone back in time. Trust me, I know a bit about the subject.”

“I’d love to trust you. But I’m afraid I’ll keep thinking that’s what a figment of my imagination would say.”

And well, Martha can’t quite fight that kind of logic.

 

**drunk enough to say I love you?**

He brings her to the Railway Arms once, just once. 

It’s not the most socially comfortable of occasions.

Chris looks down at his feet, Ray looks at Martha as if disgusted and Annie´s face turns the colour of oranges.

Martha is better at darts than Sam is, which is not difficult, but this sets Gene’s alarm off and in case she is actually any good at the game he gives Sam a talk about bringing “outsiders” to “our lair” and forbids Martha to set foot in the pub again.

Fortunately Nelson mutters _don’t listen to him_ and it makes Sam laugh, despite the charged atmosphere.

Hours later Sam is truthfully drunk and Martha isn’t; he puts his head on the table and attempts to knock himself unconscious, Martha giggles and plays with his hair a bit, soothing him – A&E in one of the busiest hospitals of London taught her many tricks to deal with drunks.

Sam makes a purring sound when she runs her fingertips across his forehead.

“Not drunk,” he mutters into his arm.

“Of course not,” Martha teases. “You are a professional.”

“Wait, wait, wait,” he lifts his head, very focused on something, despite his drunken haze. “The day we met.”

“Yes?”

“You said I reminded you of someone. Someone dead, oh my.”

Martha’s spirits drop a bit, because seriously, sometimes she totally forgets. On close distance, Sam looks nothing like him. Nothing at all. Sam is Sam. Sam could never be anything but Sam. Sam takes up so much space that there’s no room for anything else.

“Yeah?”

“Who was it?”

“Someone I hated,” Martha says without thinking.

Sam arches an eyebrow.

Then he lets his head drop on the table with a pained moan.

“I thought it was a chat-up line,” he says. He might or might not be whining.

“If it was it would be the oldest, lamest chat-up line in the world.”

Sam peeks at her through parted fingers, head buried in his hands.

“Yes, but-“

He looks at her oddly. As if he has sobered up in an instant.

“What?” Martha asks.

“Nothing,” he shakes his head and tries emptying an already empty glass in his mouth.

Martha grins.

Later Nelson has to help her carry him to his car.

 

**the winter of our contentment**

“Come on, let’s get out of here. It’s snowing up North and I got holidays.”

“I don’t know if I can leave Manchester. I don’t know if there is anything out there.”

But Martha says _come on_ and takes him by the arm and there’s snow in the North, like, Scotland, and Martha is about to tell him that the Lake Ness monster was actually a Zygon or something along those lines but she shuts up because Sam thinks he himself is mad, no need to make him think she is, too.

The charming people who run the village hotel look at them scandalized but polite, even when they order separate rooms because friends don’t go on holiday together, alone, if they are a man and a woman, and if they are a man and a woman they can’t possibly be friends.

They tease oh how they tease the woman in reception, they say they are actually, really, twins, and then newly-weds, _Mister and Mrs. Smartypants_ but they are friends, most of the time, and they sleep in opposite ends of the hallway. There are half-burnt candles in the rooms and a fire, a real fire (Martha rather likes the 70s sometimes, thank you) and thick, wooly towels on the bed. They dine lamb, washed down with rich, strawberry-edged wine and Sam spends the evening criticizing Martha’s musical taste.

There’s not so much snow in the morning but they manage a pretty decent snowball fight before collapsing, panting, on the ground, attempt at making snow angels and Martha watches his profile winter-sun-kissed while he has his eyes closed and not for the first time she thinks about kissing Sam Tyler.

(she has almost forgotten who he looks like, but it all comes back, when he closes his eyes and she can’t see his smile)

 

**keep me in your pocket for the rainy days**

They are about to cross the street when Sam says, back in their old game: “You know what I miss most? The sounds. The traffic at night, mostly. But also small things like now, I miss the sound traffic lights will make to warn blind pedestrians. I used to think it was annoying, now I miss it.”

They have to wait, because the light has gone red again. Sam gives it a resigned shrug.

“Annie hates me,” Martha spits suddenly, surprising herself rather than Sam.

“Annie doesn’t hate you, Annie doesn’t hate anybody.”

“She does. She looks at me like I’m going to steal you away.”

Sam stares at her for a long, lingering moment.

“And are you? Are you going to steal me away?”

Martha doesn’t know what he is really asking here (it turns out Sam has no clue either) but she finds herself saying “Maybe.”

And she finds herself taking his hand and pulling him with her, crossing the street hand in hand. Then they soon forget about it, question and answer and hands.

 

**who took your furniture broke your heart?**

“You don’t own things,” she says when she sees the state of his apartment.

Sam shakes his head, knowing _exactly what she means_.

“I don’t want anything permanent. It would feel like I’ve given up hope.”

Martha has never wished the Doctor would come for her so much as in this moment. More than anything she wants Sam to go home, she wants to give Sam a bit of happiness, a bit of light, a bit of _rescue_.

 

**this is the side a of the single, where I tell the world I’m alright when I’m clearly not**

Next time she sees Sam she brings a record player and some vinyls to his apartment-

-because Sam doesn’t _own_ things but he _loves_ some things and Martha is starting to know which ones.

He promises to cook dinner for her in reward.

Sam hums “Cindy Incidentally” while he cooks.

Sam likes grinding things.

More than cooking, Martha thinks Sam just likes grinding things. Martha is reminded of those illustrations of 17th century chemists she saw in the medical school museum. Grinding and grinding different ingredients into a uniform powder.

 

**this is the first verse, where I sing about the girl from tomorrow**

They listen to music sitting Indian-style on Sam’s carpet.

They haven’t touched the wine yet (in case one of them wants to use this excuse later).

Martha doesn’t see the point of Uriah Heep, which makes Sam rolls his eyes, and she thinks Elton John is “uncool” (Sam is selective about Sir Elton, so he isn’t too hard on Martha for that) and at some point Sam starts fantasizing that if they were in 2006 he would burn some CDs for Martha, to educate her.

Then he realizes the last time he made a mix CD for someone it was for Maya and his heart hurts horribly for one second.

Then it all happens a bit too fast.

Martha bends over to reach for some record at the other side of Sam –later none of them will be sure which record it was, Martha thinks it’s Jimi Hendrix, which would be so, so lame-, leaning across his lap, knee pressed to his thigh and Sam has the odd urge to smell her hair.

He does.

Martha freezes when she feels his breath on her shoulder and she looks down instinctively, and then she notices his hard-on. Sam catches her looking, Sam notices her _noticing_ and in his mind he starts one hundred apologetic statements. But none of them quite make it to his mouth.

“Sorry,” he mutters as she sits back, shying away from him.

Sam is not exactly sure what he is sorry about, he knows it has to do vaguely with the way she smells like a combination of peach shampoo and the hospital’s disinfectant, and not like _2006_ but rather like _Martha Jones_ and he is getting painfully harder each moment that passes.

He waits for her to say something, hoping there’s something to be salvaged from their friendship and _I’m an idiot_.

“You are a man,” Martha states with a neutral, if slightly stunned expression.

Sam laughs.

“Yes. Contrary to popular opinion, I am a man.”

Martha blinks herself out of her daze.

“No, I meant- I am a doctor. I know these things are natural reactions, pure physiology, it has nothing to do…”

“Wow, very romantic,” Sam says before he can stop himself and wow, where did that came from and wow, _just how good I am at self-sabotaging_.

She tilts her head to one side, studying him like he had just presented the most complex equation ever and the numbers made her head dizzy.

“Was this supposed to be romantic?” she asks.

And Sam has to think about it because it wasn’t, when she came through the door. And it hasn’t been, not purposefully. Or maybe it has been, all the time, and he just never had the guts to call it by its name.

“Well-“ he starts and he has no idea how the rest of the sentence goes because then Martha literally hurdles herself at him and kisses him with the kind of desperation he would have never, ever in a million years, associated with the calm and composed girl he has come to know.

Then it gets very blurry because Martha’s tongue is in his mouth, pressing against the roof and passing over his teeth and then her hands are _everywhere_ and he has no time to asks “what the hell?”; she kisses Sam like she has been thinking about this for a long, long time.

 

**this is the part of the song about the moment where everything falls apart and comes together**

And suddenly Sam is on the floor, pinned down to the floor, and Martha is on top of him, kissing him with almost exploratory urgency. He doesn’t let his hands wander over her body yet because he pretty much wants to touch _everywhere_ and _at the same time_ and he can’t decide where to start.

It’s very weird, Sam ponders, how thirty seconds ago he was desperately trying to hide his hard-on from Martha and now he is pretty much grabbing her hips and pulling her closer, grinding her into him in the most obscene, teenage way.

But he must hate himself more than he suspected because as soon as Martha takes a break to breathe and her mouth leaves his, he is speaking, Sam is speaking, saying stupid, Sam-like things like _no, no, wait, stop_.

Martha gives him a look. Her cheeks are flushed and Sam can tell the exact moment she thinks he doesn’t want this and she’s been ridiculous and he is rejecting her.

“I- Sorry…” he can feel her already shifting away.

Luckily he still has his hands on her waist so she is going nowhere.

“No, no, no. This is fine,” Sam tells her, like _fine_ means something, like _fine_ could even start to describe his state right now, a state best defined by the fact that he hates his trousers because they stand between him and Martha. He has never hated something as much as he hates his trousers right now.“But we should do this properly.”

“Properly?” Martha raises one eyebrow. She is still pretty much sitting on his lap and Sam’s lips look pinkish and swollen and very distracting.

“Yeah. Like with a date. You know, dinner, wine, candles. New sheets on the bed. Foreplay. That sort of thing.”

Martha looks confused. She is quite relieved Sam hasn’t laughed in her face yet, though.

“Sure, of course,” she replies, not sure what she is agreeing to but sure that it means that they have to stop what they were doing, right now. 

“Good. Proper is good. Proper is nice. We want to do this right. Right?”

Martha nods dumbly, “Right”.

Sam is expecting her to get up and stop straddling him, then, Martha realizes.

Neither move for a moment.

And when Martha does move is to push Sam against the floor again, mouth on him again and Sam thinks _right_ and can’t even remember what “proper” means, can’t remember one word of English, can hardly remember his name for a moment.

“Wait, wait.”

And this time she is the one saying that –for a moment he was worried he had done it again-, the one breaking the kiss.

“Wait, “ she repeats.

Sam smiles up at her hazily, and somehow manages to register that her hand is under his shirt and when did that happen.

“It’s going to be _hard_ but okay, I’ll stop” he groans, taking his hands off Martha.

Martha stares down at him, trying to read him. He has never seen her look so serious, or worried.

“I just need to say-“ she starts, obviously struggling with the words. “Are you sure this isn’t-? Are you sure you don’t just like me cause, cause I’m _from the future_ like you.”

_Oh._

Sam sighs.

He brings his right hand to her cheek, brushing her hair off her eyes; he steadies his breathing, trying not to let the weight of her body on his erection drive him insane.

“I thought about that, too, yes,” he tells her and watches her face drop a bit. “But, truth to be told, Martha Jones… I think I’d like you anywhere, any _time_.”

She stands like that for a moment, propped on her hands, hovering over him like a dream or a moment of summer sunlight. But then she is diving into him again, kissing, biting and almost eating at his face off.

Without quite noticing what he is doing Sam slides one hand under her t-shirt, brushing his fingers above her hip. The touch of skin on (sensitive) skin makes Martha surrender a shaky, nervous moan. Sam smiles against her mouth – but then Martha moves, her leg between his thighs and it’s his turn with the ridiculously needy groan.

She fumbles at his belt and he struggles with hers and they sort of realize they can’t do _both_ at the same time so Sam smiles against the line of her jaw and says “you first”, meaning, of course, “me first” and his thumbs slide under the waistband of her trousers and pull them down.

The carpet is rough, scrapping against her bare knee and Martha thinks it gives the whole thing a real, raw feeling – she likes that. She sits across his legs and Sam props himself up a bit as well, pressing his forehead against hers as she finishes undoing the buttons.

She touches damp, hot skin and Sam’s world goes red for a moment.

He feels Martha’s fingers, the length of them, the shape of them, fingernails scrapping a bit, he feels her pulse around him, the lines of her palm, life, destiny, love and he is afraid he is mere seconds from making a fool of himself.

Sam grabs her wrist.

“Okay, Martha? You have to stop doing that. For a moment. Just a moment. Before I have a bloody aneurysm.” 

Martha nods and watches as Sam draws one, two, three deep breaths with his eyes closed; it’s mesmerizing. She is not really used to this much intimacy and finds it intoxicating; she decides is a very good thing she is already on the floor because the little sounds he is making as he breathes, and the tantalizing touch of his skin on hers, pressing and withdrawing with each breath, is turning her bones into something liquid, sticky, and nuclear fusion-melted.

“One moment. Just- I need-“

He disentangles himself from her, just a bit. Just enough to reach across the floor and get one hand on his desk.

Martha watches him take out a packet of condoms from the first drawer.

“Oh,” she mutters. “Good thinking.”

Then she goes very still and very blushing for not bringing it up herself, _what an idiot_ and Sam catches the shutdown. Sam catches her looking down, embarrassed and he suddenly thinks she is very tiny, her little hands twisted into fists around his shirt.

And suddenly the almost fifteen years of age difference stretch between them but Sam is quick, he is oh so very quick, and he closes the gulf with one soft kiss on the corner of her lips; Martha opens her mouth a bit and Sam darts his tongue in, painfully slow, yes, and he realizes they have been so busy trying to fuck each other on the floor that they have missed this, the stillness, the tenderness, and how she tastes when he puts his lips against her skin and just leaves them there.

“Want to put it on me?” Sam offers the condom.

Martha shakes her head, still blushing but easing up again.

“You go on,” her voice sounding almost prudish.

Sam lies on his back again, it’s a mechanical gesture and though he hasn’t done this in some time he is smug enough to fake the confidence. He closes his eyes as he unrolls the condom, and he thinks, quite bizarrely, that Martha makes him want to hum Beatles songs, for some reason. Staring with “Girl” and then “Things we said today”. He gets a bit lost in that.

“You don’t think I’m presumptuous, for having condoms laying around? Please, don’t think I had this planned because I didn’t-“

Martha frowns.

“I think it’s thoughtful. I don’t think it’s presumptuous at all.”

“Sorry, it’s 1973. A guy who owns condoms is pretty much a pervert by definition.”

“Okay, now it’s a good moment for you to stop talking about that subject. Because you are making me nervous, and I’m nervous enough as it is.”

She takes his head in her hand and kisses him, closed and dry; Sam looks at her, squinting because they are so near he can hardly actually see her.

They shouldn’t fit, he keeps telling himself - _we have nothing in common, except the future_ -, they really shouldn’t, but either it’s been a long time and he is hungry for this or his body doesn’t agree with Sam at all because in a moment he is tugging at her panties and then she lifts her hips and draws a breath and then she sits on him and Sam inhales deeply and it’s done and somewhere inside his mind Sam hears a _click_ like the sound records make when the needle touches them, just one moment before the song starts.

Sam closes his eyes a moment – his knees tremble a bit; he is not coming across very manly tonight, despite his protests, but he couldn’t care less right now.

Martha is just waiting, waiting for him, waiting _around_ him, trying to keep still, but even her breathing –up and down, up and down, Sam counts the seconds, wills himself not to move yet- is driving him crazy. His hips buckle up involuntarily and he realizes they are doing it the wrong way, he should be on top and Martha pinned down, he just wants to push, push, push and brush against her like sandpaper against sandpaper.

So he puts his hand on her back and tries to change positions.

When he rolls her over he bumps his head against the edge of the bed; there’s a tense moment of almost-giggling there, when slides out of her for a heartbeat and then has to push back in again, and Sam thinks this is awkward, and amazing as well. This is so awkward, he goes over and over, so deliciously awkward in the best of ways, like trying to speak in a foreign language and that’s exactly what this is, learning a new language of skin and bones and silence and moaning and breathing and trembling and touching.

It’s exhilarating, to the point of drunkenness, he reflects, how their bodies are strangers trying to find each other out; there’s this sort of unfamiliarity that makes it all a struggle, but there’s also the joy of discovery, because Sam runs his fingertips across the underside of her forearm and Martha makes a sound between an _oh_ and a whimper. A whimper, a _fucking whimper_ Sam repeats in his head, hysterical and he just wants to swallow her whole.

And he wants to go slow, he wants to go so much slower but there’s no way, no fucking way, his hips won’t listen; he moans _no no no wait_ into the curve of Martha’s neck and comes embarrassingly quick and hard.

 

**if we clap hard enough, here comes the encore**

They make love twice that night.

They drive themselves away from the floor, getting up slowly –not really trusting their knees- and avoiding each other’s eyes for a moment.

Then there’s a quiet, very focused kind of agreement and they finish undressing each other. The first rush gone now they touch and taste and dip and test. Sam pulls Martha’s t-shirt over her head, thinking she is small and lithe and has beautiful elbows and she is most probably not his type but he doesn’t seem to mind.

“Thanks,” she says.

She seems unsure when she undoes the few buttons still clinging to Sam’s shirt, hands shaking and trying not to touch him, which is not the point, Sam thinks, it’s actually the opposite of the point so he leans in and kisses her under her ear and on her neck. He feels her body tense at the contact but it’s the good kind of tense.

He sits on the bed, cross-legged and she climbs onto him; he kisses the line of her jaw as she settles in; he licks the sweat –hot Manchester spring, it’s uncomfortable but not enough to distract them- from the hollow of her neck, it tickles a bit and she laughs and Sam can feel her whole body laughing against him like a small-scale earthquake. _Do it again_ he wants to say. He has this vague notion that he might be a bit pathetic.

Martha runs her fingertips along the line of his shoulder and forearm and the underside, too, making him shudder. She touches him like she is trying to decide what to do with him.

It’s not long before –and Sam blames the way Martha has bitten his lower lip, just then; and well, okay, maybe, because he is very much a man, thank you, the way one of her breasts feel against his palm when he cups it, all small and firm and soft- Sam is hard again.

He grins smugly and she rolls her eyes – it makes him think _familiarity_ and he remembers they are kind of friends now, against predictions, and that makes the whole thing perverse, and easy and happy. (Sam won’t admit it but he can’t wait to go to sleep just to find out how it feels like, waking up next to her).

Sam tears the wrapping of the second condom, feeling _disgustingly_ pleased with himself.

She slides down his length and he lets out a broken, tangled moan and now the smug grin in on Martha’s face.

She starts rocking forwards and back, and forward again.

It’s a sort of cradling motion and Sam tries to keep the hair off her face so he can look into her eyes through it all, but they are sweating, sticky and it’s hard to do. He looks at her and wants to tell her she is beautiful, he is about to but she gets there first-

“You are beautiful,” Martha breathes out, as if shocked by the revelation.

Sam goes all still and she can feel his cock throbbing inside her like a second pulse –for a moment, the briefest moment she thinks about the Doctor and the ache makes her twitch a bit; Sam winces. 

Sam could laugh, Sam could really laugh here because _what am I? the girl?_ and maybe, well, maybe, but Martha catches it and goes all red burning cheeks because it sounds ridiculous, you don’t tell a man he is beautiful, she kicks herself mentally and remembers _he is a man, he is a man, not a boy_ , Martha only goes with boys, not men, she is a girl, she is a woman but she is also _a girl_.

He laughs at her embarrassment and then kisses her with open mouth and laughter and teeth.

 

**if you can hold on, hold on**

It’s exactly like he has imagined-

His arm lazily around her waist –pale skin over dark skin-, his mouth damp, pressed to her shoulder-blade, and her leg around his, sweaty ankle touching sweaty shin.

Waking up is easy, in a brief world where everything smells like Martha.

 

**walk away, and don’t watch me go**

It’s six in the morning when Martha turns to him, profile lit by the lifeless light of the fridge.

“There’s no milk,” she says.

Sam rolls over in bed and looks at her, all upside down.

“I’m shagged out. You’ve killed me. I can’t possible leave this bed under any circumstance. Possibly ever again.”

Martha feels a warm, liquid, and slight-melancholic rush inside her veins because this is the most _content_ she has seen Sam Tyler since she met him and maybe she has something to do with it.

“Okay, I’ll go.”

She puts some clothes on – Sam’s black shirt included and Sam stares at her from the bed, thinking how that shirt looks on her and thinking how it’s going to smell like her afterwards and he hopes Martha leaves quickly, otherwise he’d have to _ravish_ her on the spot and they’d never get milk, ever again.

Sam is a bit of a girl and a bit hyperbolic but he loves morning sex so he really, really hopes Martha comes back soon.

She shoots him a sweet-albeit-dirty look from the door and leaves without a word.

Martha walks down the hall, feeling sore, but _good_ sore, still tingly in many parts and pretty happy, all in all.

She is about to open the door to the street when she hears a phone ringing.

She turns around to see if there’s anybody at hand – it’s the shared, communal phone of the building ringing. She sighs, thinking, okay, a couple of minutes more won’t make any difference; although she is rather anxious to get to the shop, buy the bloody pint of milk and go back to Sam and his tiny mattress and his warm, dirty sheets and his bed-hair.

She picks up the receiver.

“Hello?” She asks, not quite knowing how to address the caller.

“Martha?” says a voice from the other side.

( _the other side_ )

Martha’s eyes narrow.

“Doctor…?”

And that’s the last thing she remembers from 1973 because that’s when the world turns completely white and blank.

 

**it ends when you bump your head**

_Ah,_ the Doctor whispers, but she only hears him half-sleeping, tuned down, fading. _We were worried._

Martha wakes up to light, harsh white light and thirst. She is thirsty as she’s never been in her life.

“Head injures do that to you,” the Doctor tells her, caressing the back of her head with two fingers. She can feel the swelling there, the traces of congealed blood.

“Ouch.”

Her headache is off the scale, yes.

“I’ve been looking for you,” the Doctor tells her in a sweet sing-song voice. 

He looks very happy, and relieved. Oh, Martha hadn’t remember lately, how much she’s missed him. She would puts her arms around him and hug her if she weren’t feeling so nauseous. 

“Well, you haven’t done a great job of it. It’s taken you forever.”

“Yes. Sorry about that. I had no idea where you had ended up. And no way of knowing.”

“How did you find me then?”

“Ah. Newspaper cut. There was something in the news about a bank robbery and one of the witnesses, one Miss Martha Jones. I thought it could be just a coincidence, but it was worth a try. And look at you.”

“But that was months ago. What’s taken you so long?”

“That’s the other thing,” his expression grows serious.

“What?”

The Doctor looks disturbingly guilty; Martha can’t make out why.

“It wasn’t months ago,” he tells her. “It was two days ago. The hold up, in the bank. When you got knocked down by one of the robbers.”

“I don’t understand. It’s been months- I’ve been- That’s when I met… that’s when- Sam…”

 

**you on my mind in my sleep**

Sam Tyler lies on a hospital bed in 2006. 

Martha can’t bear to look at him.

(eyes closed, no smile, he doesn’t look like Sam, he looks like-)

“But I don’t understand it.”

The Doctor can’t even be near Sam. He just stands by the window, looking out.

“Well, I don’t understand it _too well_ myself. You see how sometimes two realities overlap and mix? This is the same except instead of realities it’s fantasies overlapping and mixing. It’s weird but not unheard of. People who have the exact same dream, people who have the same hallucination at the same time, _folie a deux_ , etc. Of course this is on a bigger, much bigger scale.”

An ugly thought creeps up on Martha.

“But he felt it, too? I mean what I did-?”

“Oh, yes, it was real for him too,” he says hurriedly, as reassuring as he can. “Definitely. You were in his dreams as he was in yours, so to speak.”

“Is he ever going to wake up?”

The Doctor throws his shoulders back, as if he were very, very tired all of the sudden.

“For a bit, yes. Then…”

Martha doesn’t need him to finish the sentence. Doesn’t _want_ him to finish the sentence.

“Can I go back? Just to say goodbye.”

“No, “ the Doctor says heavily, shaking his head. “I don’t know how you did it and I don’t know how to repeat it. And honestly? I wouldn’t send you back, even if there was a way.”

She nods and understands. She doesn’t hold it against it.

 

**a very long delayed goodbye**

An old woman enters the room as they are about to leave.

Martha has never seen her but she immediately knows she has something to do with Sam – his mother? His aunt? No, for sure, his mother-, she knows on the spot because there are bits of Sam there, in the nose, and in the warm smile and the eyes, the eyes… Martha is terribly sure she is going to break down and cry any moment now. She holds the Doctor’s hand and squeezes it to keep herself grounded.

“Are you friends of Sam’s?”the woman asks.

The Doctor looks at Martha.

“Yes,” she says, flailing. “Kind of. But I haven’t seen him in _years_.”

“I’m Ruth, his mother.” Then a pause, then, out of the blue: “He is a lovely boy. Isn’t he?”

“Oh, that he is,” the Doctor cuts in unexpectedly. “A very unfortunate face but a lovely boy, I’m sure.”

Martha elbows him, “We must be going,” she says.

“I didn’t mean-“ Ruth looks dissapointed. “You can stay longer if you want. He is getting an operation this week. The doctors are optimistic. But it’s just that- He doesn’t have many visits. Could you stay?”

That’s when Martha feels her cheeks burning up and her eyes starting to water and she has to get away, she has to leave before Sam’s mother thinks she is insane or something worse.

“I can’t …” Martha has to fight with all she has to let out each word.

The Doctor puts his arm around her shoulders and drags her to the door.

But in the last moment she holds the door open and looks back at the room, not at Sam –she can’t can’t can’t can’t see him like this- but at his mother.

“Could you-? Could you tell him something for me, when he wakes up?”

Ruth Tyler nods.

“Could you tell Sam that Martha says _goodbye_ and she is sorry if it’s a bit late?”

 

**his angel’s kiss was a joke and she is not coming back**

“Where’s that coloured plonk of yours, Tyler?” Gene asks one Monday morning and Sam is totally unprepared for that, so much that his heart goes a bit to his throat. “Haven’t seen her lately. Finally decided to dump your sorry ass for one of her better-endowed brethren?”

And Sam could crush Gene’s skull against the wall, in that moment.

But he simply mutters, “yeah, yeah, Guv, very witty” and goes back to the case file.

 

**back on the yellow brick road**

“Is there any explanation?” Martha asks, her way of saying _I’m okay, I’m okay, don’t worry_. “Why Sam-“ The name in her mouth makes her stop and lose her breath. “Why he looks exactly like…”

“ _Him_ ,” the Doctor finishes, very keen on not saying the Master’s name and Martha wonders, wonders if it hurts him like Sam’s hurts her.

The Doctor shrugs, opening the TARDIS door and letting Martha in first, his hand warmly placed on the small of her back.

“No idea. The universe has a weird sense of humour, perhaps.”

“Do you think it means something?”

“No, actually, Martha, I don’t think it means anything at all. A coincidence, a cruel coincidence.”

“Sorry,” she says, realizing that maybe he is bothered by it all, too. “I shouldn’t have dragged you with me to see him, in that hospital.” 

“It’s okay, don’t worry about it, really,” the Doctor says, halfheartedly closing the subject. Or in his case oneheartedly. “I’m glad you are okay.”

Martha looks at him and for a moment she feels better. Just a bit. Just the tiniest, slightest bit.

“I knew you’d _find me_.”

 

**hey, that’s no way to say goodbye**

Every time Sam gets home now, it’s the same.

Sam gets home and the record player and records are still there, on the floor, just as she left them.

( _left left left she left_ )

Sam sees the player and the records and he never knows what to do with them; what could he do with them, what the fuck could he do with the player and the records when there’s no Martha around, no Martha _at all_ and there’s still the scent of peach shampoo and hospital disinfectant on the carpet, on his sheets, on _his skin_?

What the fuck is he supposed to do with them? 

Except what he does, take the records in his hands and break the vinyl into hundreds of tiny, _sharp, cutting_ pieces.


End file.
